SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A suicidal cult that put little stock in worldly possessions was remembered yesterday in a materialistic manner: with an auction.

The county of San Diego sold off hundreds of possessions left behind when 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed the biggest mass suicide in U.S. history. The cultists said they were shedding their “earthly containers” to board a space craft trailing the Hale Bopp comet.

The auction last night marked a final footnote to the bewildering saga that came to light on March 26, 1997, when sheriff’s deputies found their bodies draped in purple shrouds inside their rented mansion in tony Rancho Santa Fe.

The possessions were sold off to cover funeral expenses for the victims’ families.

“We’ll treat them fairly,” said Kent Schirmer, who runs the property division of the county administrator’s office.

Of course, no amount of money will ever ease the pain of Alice and Robert Maeder, who lost their 27-year-old daughter, Gail, to Heaven’s Gate. The Sag Harbor, L.I., couple searched for more than four years for their daughter before she killed herself in the cult’s mansion.

“I guess this [auction] is closure, but not the closure we would have wanted,” Alice Maeder said. “At least we know where she is now. She’s safe … from that idiot [Heaven’s Gate leader Herff Applewhite].”

Many of the dead were found in 20 bunk beds.

Artist J.D. Healy, who with his wife, Cathee Shultz, runs the “Museum of Death” in San Diego, said America’s fascination with death made those bunk beds a hot sell.

A bunk bed and a Heaven’s Gate cult “uniform” anonymously donated to the museum will anchor a new Heaven’s Gate exhibit, Healy said.

“We weren’t going to let history pass by without getting a piece of it,” Healy said.

But aside from the infamous bunk beds, virtually none of the items sold off have any obvious tie-in to Heaven’s Gate. The lots included TVs, VCRs, kitchenware, furniture, sleeping bags, a trampoline and a fax machine.

Only group possessions were auctioned; belongings that were easily identified as owned by individuals were returned to families two years ago.

The Maeders, for example, recovered their daughter’s sports bag, which included her clothes and a bottle of water.

“She really thought she was going on that spaceship,” said Mrs. Maeder, who along with her husband are active in efforts to educate parents, youngsters and clergy about the danger posed by cults.